As a child, I remember most of my teachers pronouncing my first name correctly. Nancy. It's not a difficult name to pronounce. But, when it came to my last name it was like opening a Kinder Surprise egg; you didn't know what was going to come out of the teacher's mouth. My last name is Dominguez. Some pronounced it like Domingo, Dominique, you name it. When I was younger I just ignored it. However, when I got to high school it started bothering me. How hard can it be to pronounce Do-mín-guez. And why was it okay for my name to be mispronounced but Michael Roberts got all his syllables pronounced correctly? My name is who I am. My name defines my identity. My name is NancyDomínguez.

​Have you ever lived a similar experience ? I'm sure your students have. As a Heritage Spanish teacher I discussed this topic frequently with my students. Through these conversations I found that they too have lived similar experiences. They dislike when people mispronounce their names but sometimes they are to shy to speak up. The way I approached this was by exposing them to literature, videos and different activities that made them research the roots of their names and the importance it has on the formation of their identity.Here are some of the activities I used. I hope they are of help in your classroom if this topic ever comes up ( I hope it does):

One of my favorite activities to use for this topic is the chapter of The House on Mango Street called "Mi nombre” (Link) . In this chapter the author questions why she got that name and shares her feelings about having this name.

My name is Joaquin by Joaquin ‘corky’ Gonzales. In this poem he expresses what being Chicano in the United States means to him(Link).

A poem by Zachary Caballero on the mispronunciation of his name (Link)

A video about a reporter who got criticized for pronouncing words of Spanish origin with a Spanish accent when speaking in English (Link)

This link consists of memes that address the struggle of name mispronunciation ( Link ).

You can utilize these resources as a starting point and create a research assignment where students investigate the origin of their names. Another fun activity is to ask them to create a poem about their name (Link). Lastly, I wanted to suggest some questions you could use if you want your students to reflect on this topic/theme: